AN: Hey everyone! I am so incredibly sorry for taking so long to update. End of term was so hectic, but I am officially done with my first term of my degree! I'm currently on a flight back from Afica writing this instead of sleeping because I love you guys so much 3
I orginally wrote this chapter very differently, but I had a computer malfunction and it didn't save so I rewrote it and decided to add a slight lemon in because I felt like it :p I say slight in the fact that it's not too graphic, but if you dont want to read it, I will have it labled!
Please review :] I love knowing what you all are thinking and this chapter is extra long! Not beta'ed as always.
Sam and Dean were lying on the floor, both unmoving, but Nicole could see blood staining both of their shirts. Taking a deep breath, she ran to Dean's side, dropping to the floor beside him. Turning him over, she reached out to check for a pulse, but jerked her hand back when she realized that there was no reason to check… his throat had been ripped out. Falling backwards, she put a hand to her mouth in shock, but when she pulled it away it was covered with blood and suddenly she understood. She had killed them. Marcus's voice was ringing in her ears. "I told you all bloodsuckers were the same. It was only a matter of time until you killed them." Nicole glanced up just in time to see Marcus swinging a machete at her and barely had time to let out a scream.
"Nicole!" Through the fog filling her brain, Nicole vaguely registered something grabbing her arm and she immediately jerked away from it, sitting up in a panic.
"Woah there!" She heard Dean's voice coming from the edge of her bed and within a split second she threw herself into his arms.
"You're okay! You're Okay" she whispered.
"Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be?" Dean asked, confusing coloring his voice.
"What about Sam? Is he okay?" Nicole asked, pulling out of Dean's arms and looking like she was half ready to run out of the room and find Sam herself.
"He's fine, Nicole," Dean reassured her, running a hand down her arm. "I heard him snoring on my way into your room. Now do you want to tell me what this is about?"
Remembering the all too real feeling of their warm blood in her mouth, Nicole immediately shook her head, unwilling to share the monster she had become in her dream.
Dean leveled her with a hard glare. "I thought we were getting past this."
"Oh are we?" Nicole cocked an eyebrow at him. "Because you are so open about your feelings and you always come talk to me when you are upset."
Dean pursed his lips knowing that she was right. He was just as reluctant to talk about his vulnerabilities as she was. It was so much easier to pretend he didn't have them. Rather than admit she was right, Dean did was he did best… deflected.
"You don't have to carry everything alone you know."
"I've been doing it for years, why stop now?" Nicole snapped, then immediately felt guilty. She'd been shutting people out since she was a kid, ever since they had run away from her father, but she trusted the Winchesters and knew that Dean was just trying to help. It went against every fiber of her being to open herself up, but she was trying.
"You and Sam were dead," she whispered… "In my dream you were dead. And I had killed you."
Dean, instead of pushing her away as she had expected since she had just admitted she just dreamt about murdering him and drinking his blood, pulled her into his arms.
"What Marcus said must have really gotten to you huh?" He asked, resting his chin on top of her head.
"He was in my dream, too. He decapitated me with a machete."
Dean pulled back and looked her in the eye. "Nicole, you are not going to kill anyone and we aren't going to let Marcus anywhere near you."
Flopping back down on her pillow, Nicole ran a hand over her face. "It felt so real. More real than any dream I have ever had," she admitted.
"Well It wasn't. Now scoot over, no more nightmares tonight."
It would be so easy for Nicole to slide over and let Dean sleep next to her for the rest of the night as had become their ritual the past few weeks, but with the taste of his blood still fresh in her mouth, she was scared.
"Dean, I'm fine. Go sleep in your own bed." She needed some space to clear her head.
"Don't lie to me sweetheart. I can always tell when you lie, which I should say is all the time and I normally don't call you out on it, but I can tell you are really freaked out by this and I bet if I go back to my room you won't sleep another wink tonight."
Rolling on to her side to face him, Nicole sighed. "You don't have to take care of me Dean."
"Maybe, I want to. Why are you so difficult?" He retorted.
"Why are YOU so difficult?" She shot back.
"I'll show you difficult," Dean said, his face splitting into a grin and before Nicole even had a chance to react, he pounced on her with the speed of a highly trained hunter and started tickling her.
If Nicole had been able to breath or retain any sort of control over her muscles, she would have easily been able to throw Dean off, but as it was, she was very ticklish and couldn't do anything except let out a shriek and try to curl away from him. Moving to straddle her, Dean grabbed both of her wrists in one of his hands and pinned them above her head.
"Dean stop!" She cried, gasping for breath, still trying to wiggle her way away from him in between laughs.
"Not until you surrender." He grinned mercilessly and continued his assault on her sides.
"You're gonna wake Sam up!" She pointed out between giggles.
"No YOU'RE gonna wake Sam up," Dean said with a wink, "Who knew you were such a screamer."
"Fine. FINE! You win, I give up!" Nicole panted, unable to take another second of tickling.
Dean grinned at her triumphantly and finally let his fingers still, but made no move to get off of her. Swallowing hard, Dean took in the sight of Nicole beneath him, cheeks flushed and chest heaving and decided it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He still had her hands pinned above her head and the usual sexual tension that crackled between them seemed to have increased ten fold.
Nicole saw Dean's gaze darken and her heart started pounding in her chest. There were a million reasons not to do this, but at that moment every single one of them flew out of her head. Even Dean's reaction last time they almost crossed this line seemed irrelevant when he was looking at her like that and before she had a chance to put her walls back up and get control of the situation, Dean leaned down and pressed his lips roughly against hers and Nicole was lost.
Begin Lemon
Dean kissed exactly how she remember; thoroughly and styled for her pleasure. He definitely knew what women liked. Pushing away the thought of how many woman had probably come before her, Nicole finally gained enough of her wits back to jerk her hands out of Dean's grasp, threading one into his hair and digging the other into his lower back, pulling him harder against her. Dean rocked against her and Nicole let out a strangled breath against his lips.
With his hands now free, Dean slid them under her shirt and began caressing the bare skin of her back. Unable to stand being pinned under Dean any longer when she felt like she was going to internally combust, Nicole flipped the both of them over and used her new position to pull Dean's shirt over his head. The second his torso was bear, Nicole sat up and pulled her own shirt off and had the pleasure of seeing Dean's eyes widen at the sight of her naked chest. Filled with a new boost of confidence, Nicole decided to give Dean a taste of his own medicine and pinned his own hands above his head as she leaned down to kiss him again.
Dean struggled against her hold in vain. "Let me touch you," he whispered and Nicole shook her head with a sly smile on her face.
"Oh hell no. I am not playing this game," Dean muttered before sweeping Nicole off of him and reversing their positions.
Being with Dean was an entirely new experience for Nicole. Whereas most guys she had been with could only focus on one thing at a time, Dean's hands and mouth had never left her body. She now understood what other women meant when they said they felt worshipped in bed.
End Lemon
Nicole was currently staring at her ceiling, her mind unable to quiet. On one hand, that had easily been the best sex of her life, but on the other hand, reality was coming back to her and she was worried that she and Dean had just royally screwed up their relationship.
"I can literally hear your mind going 100 miles an hour." Dean spoke softly, propping himself up on his elbows to look down at her. He ran one hand down her hip gently. "Stop overthinking."
Easier said than done, Nicole thought to herself. She was beginning to realize that she may have just made a huge mistake, even if it was one that she didn't regret. Nicole didn't do intimacy well. She hardly dated and when she did, she always kept them at arms length. Before tonight, she had already had a massive crush on Dean, but then she just had to go and sleep with him to make it worse. They were getting dangerously close to intimacy and it was making her want to pull away and protect herself from inevitably being hurt by Dean.
But instead of revealing the chaos she felt inside, Nicole just smiled at Dean and said "you're right. Good night, Dean." She rolled over on to her side facing away from him, knowing that she wouldn't be able to sleep any more that night.
Within a second, Nicole felt Dean's arms snake around her waist and he pulled her flush against his chest. Nicole couldn't help the small grin that spread across her lips.
"Dean…" She whispered. "You know I hate being cuddled." They'd had this discussion right after he tried to hold her after on of her nightmares.
"I still don't believe you," he replied. "No one hates being cuddled."
"I do," She said, attempting to shrug him off. "It's too much touching."
"Oh and what we just did wasn't?"
"That's different…" She murmured.
"Well get over it," Dean whispered against her neck. "I am going to hold you and we're going back to sleep."
When Nicole awoke again the next morning, the sun was barely rising and she was shocked to realize that she had fallen asleep again despite what she had been expecting. Dean wasn't awake yet, but his arm was still securely wrapped around her and Nicole desperately needed to escape and regain some clarity after last night.
Taking a deep breath, Nicole carefully lifted Dean's arm off of her and rolled out from underneath it. Replacing her body with her pillow, she gently set his arm back down and let out the breath she had been holding as Dean grumbled, but didn't wake. Slipping her clothes back on, Nicole crept down the stairs as silently as she could, knowing what a light sleeper Dean was.
Making her way into the kitchen, Nicole turned on the coffee maker, making one her favorites that was one of the few human things she was still allowed to have. Nicole grabbed her now full mug and made her way to the front porch, deciding to watch the sunrise. Pulling out her phone, she sent a text so Allison, asking her to call her when she woke up. She needed her best friends advice right now. While she was at it, she sent a message to her mom, brother and older sister, letting them know she was still alive and feeding them a few more lies about her summer so they wouldn't worry. To her surprise, her sister called her a split second later.
"Em! What are you doing awake?" Nicole answered, a smile spreading across her face. She had missed her sister, not having talked to her since she hit the road with Sam and Dean almost a month ago.
"Morning sickness," she complained. "Don't ever get pregnant. It's not as fun as it sounds."
"Well, as a med student, I don't think pregnancy or birth sound fun at all so don't worry about that," Nicole joked back.
"I haven't had a real conversation with you in so long! I had to call knowing you were by your phone," Emily gushed and began peppering Nicole with questions about her new job traveling America. Unable to give any real answers, Nicole quickly deflected her sisters questions and asked about the baby and her husband instead and as Emily chatted, Nicole's mind was free to wander.
She often wondered how she and her sister, though so close in age, ended up so different. After their rocky childhood, where Nicole shut herself off and became distrustful, Emily did the opposite. She jumped from one serious relationship to the next from the time she was 14 until she eventually married her college sweetheart right after graduation. Nicole on the other hand, had never had a successful relationship and got the reputation for being an Ice Queen. Nicole was perfectly happy focusing on her career and keeping to herself where Emily gave her heart away to every she dated before she settled down and started her white picket fence life. Sometimes Nicole wondered if there was seriously something wrong with her, preventing her from ever having anything more serious than a crush, but when she voiced these concerns to Emily and Allison, they both assured her that she just needed to wait for the man special enough to sweep her off her feet. Nicole thought that was unlikely.
As the sun fully rose into the sky and Nicole drained the last of her coffee said good-bye to her deliriously happy sister and made her way back into the house. She was standing in the kitchen rinsing her mug when someone else finally awoke. She could immediately tell it was Dean by his gait and though her breath caught in her throat, she didn't turn from the sink. She had done some thinking while vaguely listening to Emily chatter, and decided that given her propensity for blowing up perfectly good relationships by running away and given Dean's womanizing, they had made a big mistake which shouldn't be repeated no matter how much it pained her. If she had to guess, Dean would probably be relieved that she wasn't going to force the issue and cling on to him so she was really doing him a favor.
She heard Dean approach her from behind and his arms wrapped around her waist.
"Morning, sweetheart," he said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. Sighing heavily, Nicole stepped out of his arms and turned to face him.
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?" She asked, a small smile softening the blow.
"Even now?" Dean cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Especially now," Nicole said, drying her hands on Bobby's dishtowel.
"Do we need to talk about this?" Dean shifted uncomfortably.
"Nope. It happened, it was fun, it was great even, but not a good idea," Nicole shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal at all.
"Right…" Dean drawled, his mind still attempting to process what Nicole had just said to him. "You're okay with this?" He gestured between the two of them.
"You know mean, Dean-o. I'm always okay. Don't fret." And with that Nicole headed back up stairs to take a shower.
Dean watched as Nicole ducked out of the kitchen at a complete loss for words. Not a good idea? A step forward, or inevitable is what Dean would have called it, but maybe she was right, he reminded himself. She was going back to med school in 2 months and besides, what did a 30 year old with a GED have to offer a 23 year old genius. Resisting the urge to punch something, Dean decided to skip breakfast and head out to the garage until he no longer wanted to kick himself.
After a long phone call with Allison in which she called Nicole an idiot and that Sam and told her how crazy Dean was about her, which Nicole ignored, the vampire headed back downstairs, saying hi to Sam and Bobby, before grabbing the next book in their research pile and digging in. Within the hour, Sam and Bobby had joined her in the living room, but Dean had remained mysteriously absent which had Sam shooting her sidelong looks all morning.
Everyone in the house was getting frustrated. Nicole felt as though she'd read more books these past few days than she had ever read in her life, even during finals and was about half a second from throwing the one in her hands at the wall when a passage suddenly jumped off the page at her.
"Oh my God!" She shrieked. Sam and Bobby snapped their heads towards her.
"Holy Shit! You guys! I found him! I fucking found him!" Both of the men immediately jumped up and ran around the back of her chair to read over her shoulder.
Of course the passage didn't include how to track the alpha or where to find him because nothing could ever be so easy, but it did give a physical description of the worlds oldest vampire and a note that that he was most often sighted in the bayous of southern Louisiana.
"It's not an instruction manual by any means, but at least now we know where and what we are looking for!" Nicole beamed up at Sam and let out a whoop. Scooping her up, Sam spun Nicole in a circle letting out a bark of laughter.
"What's going on in here?"
Nicole and Sam froze as Dean appeared in the doorway with a frown on his face. Ignoring his bad mood, Nicole ran and launched herself into Dean's arms. "We found him!" she cried, "We finally found him!"
Without any further delay, the gang said a good-bye to Bobby with a promise to return soon, updated Cas on what they had found, and began driving South. Now that they had a lead, Nicole felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Deciding that it wouldn't hurt to take their time, the brothers found a few cases on the way to Louisiana to work, the first about a days drive from Bobby's house. It had been a simple salt and burn of a spirit that had been haunting an abandoned house in Yukon, Oklahoma which had been responsible for the near death experiences of a few amateur ghost hunting teams. While the boys were busy chopping their way through the basement wall where the body of the wife of the last own was hidden, Nicole had had a great time shooting salt rounds through the spirit. When their salt rounds had run out, she had grabbed an iron rod and pretended to be a baseball player batting ghosts while laughing gleefully. Dean looked at her like she was insane when they finally lit the corpse up, but it was easy to enjoy ghost hunting when you were a strong, fast and nearly invincible vampire.
That night they went celebrating and Nicole, who was squeezed into her most flattering jeans and a low cut tank top, was not lacking of admirers, allowing some of them to lead her out on to the dance floor.
It felt good not to think about Dean for the night, Nicole thought as she shook her hair back and looked up at the wanna-be cowboy she was dancing with. Suddenly hungry, Nicole excused herself and back to the brothers table where Dean was hosting court, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She earned a glare from Dean's fangirls when she walked up but, she couldn't bring herself to care.
"Dean," she waved her hands rudely in front of his face trying to catch his attention.
"What?" He grunted, tearing his eyes away from the blonde in a short jean skirt standing next to him.
"Can I have the car keys?"
"…Why? You can't drive baby, you know that."
"I know, you jerk, I'm hungry." Nicole held out her hand impatiently, ignoring the other girls at the table watching the exchange. As Dean dug in his pocket for the keys, the Blonde finally got the nerve to speak up.
"Who's this?" She asked Dean in a hushed voice, which Nicole still clearly heard. She almost laughed at the pink tinge that crept up Dean's neck. Sam, however, had no problems laughing at his brother's discomfort, no doubt aware of what had transpired between them thanks to Allison.
With a glare at Sam, Dean turned back to the blonde, "um.. our cousin," he lied, trying to salvage his chances with her.
Snatching the keys from Dean's hand, Nicole made a sound of disgust. "Gross, Dean," she said and Sam, who had just raised his bottle to his mouth, laughed so hard he spit his beer onto the table. Making her way outside, Nicole froze halfway across the parking lot as a dark figure darted away from the impala. Her senses immediately on over drive, Nicole ran forward, shouting as she went. Just as soon as she got close enough to make out the car the figure had jumped into, it sped off into the night, but she could have sworn it looked like the Atwater's red camero.
AN: so what are the Atwaters doing following them through Oklahoma? Please review! I'll try to update soon, but I have family coming to visit so it might be crazy. HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!